Update on speaking endorsement

As confirmed in GCSE and International GCSE posts, the speaking endorsement criteria were finalised by Ofqual in November 2020 and a link to their ‘Subject Level Conditions and Requirements’ documents was provided.

GCSE -Speaking endorsement assessment criteria for summer 2021

International GCSE - Speaking endorsement assessment criteria for summer 2021

You can discover more on the speaking endorsement by visiting the ‘Summer 2021 Exams Support’ tab at the top of each of the relevant qualification pages on our website. From here, you’ll be able to access the following:

In addition, there are useful exemplification of possible target-language grammatical structures at 'Pass', 'Merit' and 'Distinction' levels for each of the fourteen languages that we offer. International GCSE teachers can access the guidance from the link below. 

Language-specific International GCSE summer 2021 guidance

Further support is available in the form of pre-recorded Subject Advisor briefings:

Getting to grips with GCSE speaking endorsement

Getting to grips with speaking endorsement – International GCSE Chinese, French, German and Spanish

As you will see from the FAQs, all candidates (including private and non-taught candidates) must be offered an opportunity for some speaking assessment to facilitate speaking endorsement. This can be done with external tutors and remotely. Although our language qualifications are designed for taught learners, I’ve posted some support in the Language teacher Community if you’re looking for specialist teachers to conduct speaking assessments in languages that are not taught at your school or college.

Help me find someone to conduct a speaking assessment in a language not taught at my centre

The Centre needs to ensure that an assessor declaration form is completed by the person assessing the students and responsible for determining the candidates' speaking endorsement levels. This has been uploaded to our website and you can access via the links below: